International Herald Tribune - October 06, 2006 An international study has found that violence against women committed by their live-in spouses or partners is widespread, common in both the developed and developing world, as well as in both rural and urban areas.

In interviews with nearly 25,000 women at 15 sites in 10 countries, researchers from the World Health Organization found that rates of partner violence ranged between 15 percent in Yokohama, Japan, to 71 percent in rural Ethiopia.

At six of the sites, 50 to 75 percent of women said they had been subject to moderate or severe violence in the home. At 13 of the sites, more than a quarter of all women said they had suffered such violence in the past year. "Violence by an intimate partner is a common experience worldwide," the authors wrote of the findings, which are being published in this week's issue of The Lancet, the British medical journal.

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